It was no easy task to put the second book of Capital in shape for publication, and do it in a way that on the one hand would make it a connected and as far as possible complete work, and on the other would represent exclusively the work of its author, not of its editor. The great number of available, mostly fragmentary, texts worked on added to the difficulties of this task. At best one single manuscript (No. IV) had been revised throughout and made ready for press. But the greater part had become obsolete through subsequent revision. The bulk of the material was not finally polished, in point of language, although in substance it was for the greater part fully worked out. The language was that in which Marx used to make his extracts: careless style full of colloquialisms, often containing coarsely humorous expressions and phrases interspersed with English and French technical terms or with whole sentences and even pages of English. Thoughts were jotted down as they developed in the brain of the author. Some parts of the argument would be fully treated, others of equal importance only indicated.

Factual material for illustration would be collected, but barely arranged, much less worked out. At conclusions of chapters, in the author's anxiety to get to the next, there would often be only a few disjointed sentences to mark the further development here left incomplete. And finally there was the well-known handwriting which the author himself was sometimes unable to decipher.

I have contented myself with reproducing these manuscripts as literally as possible, changing the style only in places where Marx would have changed it himself and interpolating explanatory sentences or connecting statements only where this was absolutely necessary, and where, besides, the meaning was clear beyond any doubt. Sentences whose interpretation was susceptible of the slightest doubt were preferably copied word for word.The passages which I have remodelled or interpolated cover barely ten pages in print and concern only matters of form.

The mere enumeration of the manuscript material left by Marx for Book II proves the unparalleled conscientiousness and strict self-criticism with which he endeavoured to elaborate his great economic discoveries to the point of utmost completion before he published them. This self-criticism rarely permitted him to adapt his presentation of the subject, in content as well as in form, to his ever widening horizon, the result of incessant study. The above material consists of the following:

First, a manuscript entitled Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie , containing 1472 quarto pages in 23 notebooks, written in August 1861 to June 1863. It is the continuation of a work of the same title, the first part of which appeared in Berlin, in 1859. It treats, on pages 1-220 (Notebooks I-V) and again on pages 1159-1472 (Notebooks XIX-XXIII), of the subjects examined in Book I of Capital , from the transformation of money into capital to the end, and is the first extant draft there of. Pages 973-1158 (Notebooks XVI-XVIII) deal with capital and profit, rate of profit, merchant's capital and money-capital, that is to say with subjects which later were developed in the manuscript for Book III. The themes treated in Book II and very many of those which are treated later, in Book III, are not yet arranged separately. They are treated in passing, to be specific, in the section which makes up the main body of the manuscript, viz., pages 220-972 (Notebooks VI-XV), entitled "Theories of Surplus-Value." This section contains a detailed critical history of the pith and marrow of Political Economy, the theory of surplus-value and develops parallel with it, in polemics against predecessors, most of the points later investigated separately and in their logical connection in the manuscript for Books II and III.

After eliminating the numerous passages covered by Books II and III, Iintend to publish the critical part of this manuscript as Capital , Book IV. This manuscript, valuable though it is, could be used only very little in the present edition of Book II.

The manuscript chronologically following next is that of Book III. It was written, at least the greater part of it, in 1864 and 1865. Only after this manuscript had been completed in its essential parts did Marx undertake the elaboration of Book I which was published in 1867. I am now getting this manuscript of Book III in shape for press.

The following period -- after the publication of Book I -- is represented by a collection of four folio manuscripts for Book II, numbered I-IV by Marx himself. Manuscript I (150 pages), presumably written in 1865 or 1867, is the first separate, but more or less fragmentary, elaboration of Book II as now arranged. Here too nothing could be used. Manuscript III is partly a compilation of quotations and references to the notebooks containing Marx's extracts, most of them relating to Part I of Book II, partly elaborations of particular points, especially a critique of Adam Smith's propositions on fixed and circulating capital and the source of profit; furthermore an exposition of the relation of the rate of surplus-value to the rate of profit, which belongs in Book III. Little that was new could be garnered from the references, while the elaborations for volumes II and III were superseded by subsequent revisions and had also to be discarded for the greater part.

Manuscript IV is an elaboration, ready for press, of Part I and the first chapters of Part II of Book II, and has been used where suitable.

Although it was found that this manuscript had been written earlier than Manuscript II, yet, being far more finished in form, it could be used with advantage for the corresponding part of this book. All that was needed was a few addenda from Manuscript II. The latter is the only somewhat complete elaboration of Book II and dates from the year 1870. The notes for the final editing, which I shall mention immediately, say explicitly: "The second elaboration must be used as the basis."There was another intermission after 1870, due mainly to Marx's ill health. Marx employed this time in his customary way, by studying agronomics, rural relations in America and, especially, Russia, the money-market and banking, and finally natural sciences such as geology and physiology. Independent mathematical studies also figure prominently in the numerous extract notebooks of this period. In the beginning of 1877 he had recovered sufficiently to resume his main work. Dating back to the end of March 1877 there are references and notes from the above-named four manuscripts intended as the basis of a new elaboration of Book II, the beginning of which is represented by Manuscript V (56 folio pages). It comprises the first four chapters and is still little worked out. Essential points are treated in footnotes.

The material is rather collected than sifted, but it is the last complete presentation of this, the most important section of Part I.

A first attempt to prepare from it a manuscript ready for press was made in Manuscript VI ( after October 1877 and before July 1878), embracing only 17 quarto pages, the greater part of the first chapter.

A second and last attempt was made in Manuscript VII, "July 2, 1878," only 7 folio pages.

About this time Marx seems to have realised that be would never be able to finish the elaboration of the second and third books in a manner satisfactory to himself unless a complete revolution in his health took place. Indeed, manuscripts V-VIII show far too frequent traces of an intense struggle against depressing ill health. The most difficult bit of Part I had been worked over in Manuscript V. The remainder of Part I and all of Part II, with the exception of Chapter XVII, presented no great theoretical difficulties.

But Part III, dealing with the reproduction and circulation of social capital, seemed to him to be very much in need of revision; for Manuscript II had first treated reproduction without taking into consideration money-circulation, which is instrumental in effecting it, and then gone over the same question again, but with money-circulation taken into account. This was to be eliminated and the whole part to be reconstructed in such a way as to conform to the author's enlarged horizon. Thus Manuscript VIII came into existence, a notebook containing only 70 quarto pages. But the vast amount of matter Marx was able to compress into this space is clearly demonstrated on comparing that manuscript with Part III, in print, after leaving out the pieces inserted from Manuscript II.

This manuscript is likewise merely a preliminary treatment of the subject, its main object having been to ascertain and develop the points of view newly acquired in comparison with Manuscript II, with those points ignored about which there was nothing new to say. An essential portion of Chapter XVII, Part II, which anyhow is more or less relevant to Part III, was once more reworked and expanded. The logical sequence is frequently interrupted, the treatment of the subject gappy in places and very fragmentary, especially the conclusion. But what Marx intended to say on the subject is said there, somehow or other.

This is the material for Book II, out of which I was supposed "to make something, " as Marx remarked to his daughter Eleanor shortly before his death. I have construed this task in its narrowest meaning. So far as this was at all possible, I have confined my work to the mere selection of a text from the available variants. I always based my work on the last available edited manuscript, comparing this with the preceding ones. Only the first and third parts offered any real difficulties, i.e., of more than a mere technical nature, and these were indeed considerable. I have endeavoured to solve them exclusively in the spirit of the author.

I have translated quotations in the text whenever they are cited in confirmation of facts or when, as in passages from Adam Smith, the original is available to everyone who wants to go thoroughly into the matter. This was impossible only in Chapter X, because there it is precisely the English test that is criticised.

The quotations from Book I are paged according to its second edition, the last one to appear in Marx's lifetime.

For Book III, only the following materials are available, apart from the first elaboration in manuscript form of Zur Kritik , from the above-mentioned parts of Manuscript III, and from a few occasional short notes scattered through various extract notebooks: The folio manuscript of 1864-65, referred to previously, which is about as fully worked out as Manuscript II of Book II; furthermore, a notebook dated 1875: The Relation of the Rate of Surplus-Value to the Rate of Profit, which treats the subject mathematically (in equations). The preparation of this Book for publication is proceeding rapidly. So far as I am able to judge up to now, it will present mainly technical difficulties, with the exception of a few but very important sections.

I consider this an opportune place to refute a certain charge which has been raised against Marx, first in only whispers, sporadically, but more recently, after his death, proclaimed an established fact by German Socialists of the Chair and of the State and by their hangers-on. It is claimed that Marx plagiarised the work of Rodbertus. I have already stated elsewhere [1] what was most urgent in this regard, but not until now have I been able to adduce conclusive proof.

As far as I know this charge was made for the first time in R. Meyer's Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes , p. 43: "It can be proved that Marx has gathered the greater part of his critique from these publications " -- meaning the works of Rodbertus dating back to the last half of the thirties. I may well assume, until further evidence is produced, that the "whole proof" of this assertion consists in Rodbertus having assured Herr Meyer that this was so.

In 1879 Rodbertus himself appears on the scene and writes the following to J. Zeller ( Zeitschrift fur die gesamte Staatswissenschaft , Tubingen, 1879, p. 219), with reference to his work Zur Erkenntniss unsrer staatswirtschaftlichen Zustande , 1842:

"You will find that this" (the line of thought developed in it) "has been very nicely used... by Marx, without, however, giving me credit for it." The posthumous publisher of Rodbertus's works, Th. Kozak, repeats his insinuation without further ceremony. (Das Kapital von Rodbertus. Berlin, 1884, Introduction, p. XV.)Finally in the Briefe und Sozialpolitische Aufsatze von Dr. Rodbertus-Jagetzow , published by R. Meyer in 1881, Rodbertus says point-blank: "To-day I find I have been robbed by Schaffle and Marx without having my name mentioned.

" (Letter No. 60, p..134.) And in another place, Rodbertus's claim assumes a more definite form: "In my third social letter I have shown virtually in the same way as Marx, only more briefly and clearly, what the source of the surplus-value of the capitalist is. " (Letter No. 48, p.

111.)

Marx had never heard anything about any of these charges of plagiarism.

In his copy of the Emancipationskampf only that part had been cut open which related to the International. The remaining pages were not opened until I cut them myself after his death. He never looked at the Tubingen Zeitschrift . The Briefe , etc., to R. Meyer likewise remained unknown to him, and I did not learn of the passage referring to the "robbery"until Dr. Meyer himself was good enough to call my attention to it in 1884.

However, Marx was familiar with letter No. 48. Dr. Meyer had been so kind as to present the original to the youngest daughter of Marx. When some of the mysterious whispering about the secret source of his criticism having to be sought in Rodbertus reached the ear of Marx, he showed me that letter with the remark that here he had at last authentic information as to what Rodbertus himself claimed; if that was all Rodbertus asserted he, Marx, had no objection, and he could well afford to let Rodbertus enjoy the pleasure of considering his own version the briefer and clearer one. In fact, Marx considered the matter settled by this letter of Rodbertus.

He could so all the more since I know for certain that he was not in the least acquainted with the literary activity of Rodbertus until about 1859, when his own critique of Political Economy had been completed, not only in its fundamental outlines, but also in its more important details.

Marx began his economic studies in Paris, in 1843, starting with the great Englishmen and Frenchmen. Of German economists he knew only Rau and List, and he did not want any more of them. Neither Marx nor I heard a word of Rodbertus's existence until we had to criticise, in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung , 1848, the speeches he made as Berlin Deputy and his actions as Minister. We were both so ignorant that we had to ask the Rhenish deputies who this Rodbertus was that had become a Minister so suddenly. But these deputies too could not tell us anything about the economic writings of Rodbertus. That on the other hand Marx had known very well already at that time, without the help of Rodbertus, not only whence but also how "the surplus-value of the capitalist " came into existence is proved by his Poverty of Philosophy , 1847, and by his lectures on wage-labour and capital, delivered in Brussels the same year and published in Nos.

264-69 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung , in 1849. It was only in 1859, through Lassalle, that Marx learned of the existence of a certain economist named Rodbertus and thereupon Marx looked up the "third social letter"in the British Museum.

These were the actual circumstances. And now let us see what there is to the content, of which Marx is charged with "robbing" Rodbertus. Says Rodbertus: "In my third social letter I have shown in the same way as Marx, only more briefly and clearly, what the source of the surplus-value of the capitalist is. " This, then, is the crux of the matter: The theory of surplus-value. And indeed, it would he difficult to say what else there is in Marx that Rodbertus might claim as his property. Thus Rodbertus declares here he is the real originator of the theory of surplus-value and that Mars robbed him of it.

And what has the third social letter to say in regard to the origin of surplus-value? Simply this: That "rent, " his term which lumps together ground-rent and profit, does not arise from an "addition of value" to the value of a commodity, but "from a deduction of value from wages; in other words, because wages represent only a part of the value of a product,"and if labour is sufficiently productive wages need not be "equal to the natural exchange-value of the product of labour in order to leave enough of this value for the replacing of capital (!) and for rent. We are not informed however what sort of a "natural exchange-value" of a product it is that leaves nothing for the "replacing of capital," consequently, for the replacement of raw material and the wear and tear of tools.

It is our good fortune to be able to state what impression was produced on Marx by this stupendous discovery of Rodbertus. In the manuscript Zur Kritik , notebook X, pp. 445 et seqq. we find a "Digression. Herr Rodbertus.